Contents

Editorial

This reference journal is published once a year and represents - in
English language – most new publications in the field of cultural/social
anthropology published in the German language area (Austria, Germany,
Switzerland). Since many of these publications have been written in German, and
most of these publications in the field of anthropology are not included in
major, English language abstracting services, Anthropological Abstracts(AA)
offers an opportunity and convenient source of information for scholars who do
not read German, to become aware of socio-cultural anthropological research and
publications in German-speaking countries. Included are journal articles,
monographs, edited volumes, exhibition catalogs, yearbooks, etc. Occasionally,
publications in English, or French, are included as well if the publisher is
less well-known internationally and if it is likely that such publications will
not be noticed abroad.

Additionally, a printed version of Anthropological
Abstracts is published with Lit Publishers, Muenster, Germany.

Some technical remarks

This reference journal uses a flexible approach: While publications are
represented in the form of abstracts in most cases, for edited volumes the Current Contents method is applied, i.e. only authors and titles appear. So
technically, this is a combined approach of an Abstracting Reference Journal
and the Current Contents method of listing names and titles only.

Abstracts supplied by authors are marked by ## before and after the
abstract. Due to space limitations they may be abbreviated. Up to three editors
of an anthology will be listed; if there are more, only the first will appear
(added by ‚et al.’).

Only those papers in journals will be abstracted that are relevant to
cultural/social anthropology - which mainly applies in the case of
interdisciplinary, or predominantly sociological journals. AA also tries to cover subjects related to, or influencing, anthropology,
i.e. if texts are relevant for present discourses. Thus, there may be material
from history, folklore studies, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, etc., if
there is an intersection with present debates in anthropology.

Keywords serve as an "abstract of the abstract" - for a quick
assessment of the contents. Page numbers in the Subject Index refer to the page
where the Keywords listings appear.

The Subject Index – consisting
of the Keywords of abstracts in
alphabetical order – do not follow the Thesaurus principle but are chosen
rather loosely and generously, according to need, and there is no strict formal
rule or ‚normalization’ to limit their number. In many cases, Subject Index terms try to be specific
rather than general, in order to reduce the time of searching. Thus, if there
is a topic relating to ‚history’, it will be specified: like ‚history
(Guinea)’, or ‚history and literacy’, so that users do not have to check all
‚history’ entries.

Regarding alphabetical order, the German Umlaut (ä, ö, ü) will be broken
up into ae, oe, ue in the text, but is disregarded in the indexes.

The publishers, museums and research institutions must be thanked for
their generally prompt deliveries of the books requested for Anthropological Abstracts.

##In medicine, technology may on the one hand support certain economic
and political structures, such as dependency of remote local health centers on
large clinics in cities. On the other hand, telemedicine and e-health as tools
of increasing the circulation of knowledge and information have the opposite
effect on the level of the doctor-patient relationship. Thus, they can empower
the patients by democratizing knowledge that used to be exclusive to doctors,
by forming strong social online networks and by enabling patients to be more
involved in communication and decision making with regards to their health and
treatment.##

Thirteen papers of scholars of
various fields discuss the topic in specific cases, and conceptually. The
editors plead for interrelating discourses of various disciplines, foster
interdisciplinary exchange, and focus on interdisciplinary approaches. They
follow discourses of civil society. The book is based on a symposium at the
Center for Diversity Studies at Cologne, Germany, in 2009.

ANDERL,
GABRIELE

Provenienzforschung am Museum für
Völkerkunde Wien

Archiv
für Völkerkunde 59-60.2009:1-58

Keywords: museology, provenance

Provenance
research at the Museum for Anthropology, Vienna

This contribution discusses
the special conditions and problems of the provenance of artifacts in
ethnographic museums in general and the museum in Vienna in particular. This is
illustrated with several cases as examples.

##This book reflects the intellectual encounter, over the years, between
on the one hand, a group of Dutch scholars studying the Ancient Mediterranean,
Ancient Egypt and Africa, and, on the other hand, Martin Gardiner Bernal as one
of the most challenging and innovative, but also controversial and criticised,
scholars of recent decades. In the 1980s, Bernal delivered his first statements
on his Black Athena thesis, vocally
claiming with new arguments and a new style of presentation, what the
specialists had realised for almost a century: that the roots of western
civilisation were to be sought not in Ancient Greece but outside Europe, in
Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (and perhaps ultimately in sub-Saharan Africa).

In the 1987 first volume of Black
Athena (initially planned to be a tetralogy) Bernal's leading question was
not so much 'what really happened in the formative millennia of European
proto-history', but rather: 'what processes in the course of two and a half
millennia of European intellectual history have made us forget our essential
indebtedness to "the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilisation"?'##

BINSBERGEN, WIM VAN: The limits of the Black
Athena thesis and of Afrocentricity as empirical explanatory models

BRÄUCHLER, BIRGIT

Immaterielles Kulturerbe als Friedensstifter

Sociologus 61.2011:91-115

Keywords:
cultural heritage, heritage of culture

##Intangible Cultural
Heritage as Peacemaker

This contribution discusses the prospects and challenges arising out of
a declaration of so-called traditional justice mechanisms as internationally
recognised intangible cultural heritage. For long, internationally sponsored
post-conflict reconstruction was mainly concerned with the rebuilding of
tangible cultural heritage that had been damaged or destroyed during conflict.
In contrast, the impact of mass violence on intangible cultural aspects such as
social structures, traditional justice mechanisms and values is often ignored
due to their invisibility to outsiders, the enormous amount of time needed to
rebuild them and the lack of knowledge on how to facilitate this process. This
has disastrous effects on post-conflict-situations, especially in cases of
neighbours fighting neighbours rather than the state fighting its citizens, which
makes conflict resolution and reconciliation even more difficult. However, in
places such as Rwanda, East Timor and the Moluccas (Indonesia) it was the
re-establishment of broken social relationships of the people concerned that
brought reconciliation and sustainable peace.##

The author discusses
difficulties of communication/understanding between cultures in
central-European settings, i.e. from a western-sociological perspective. She
names examples such as: ‚insider’ language, gestures, different
conceptions/apprehensions of time. These culture-specific codes tend to make
communication difficult – resulting in social and economic effects, conflict,
or culture shock. Therefore, the author argues, professio-nal help in the form of
‚intercultural competence’ and ‚intercultural conflict solution’ is required.
Perceiving alterity, changes with global develop-ments/processes she argues as
a cultural scientist, and notions such as hybrid cultures, transculturality,
multiculturalism refer to these new frames of relating culturally.

UNESCO’s „World Heritage“ designation has become a globally observed,
coveted distinction that strongly influences public ideas about culture. The
article reports on multi-sited field research in the complex and contested
arena formed by the world Heritage committee, the UNESCO convention
secretariat, several expert NGOs and the state representatives. This arena is
dominated by written materials, and access to it is subject to certain
restrictions, yet ethnographic research proves no less rewarding here than in
other, less formal contexts. In response to accusations of Eurocentrism, the
designation process has in recent years shifted to everyday heritage, new
categories such as cultural landscapes, a broadening of authenticity standards,
and concept-driven nominations. European dominance persists, however, and has
provoked a North-south conflict in which leading states of the South
increasingly challenge advice received from the mostly Euroamerican experts.
This reproduces tendencies found in other global regimes, such as that for
climate control, and demonstrates the limits of multilateralism in a world that
continues to be structured by nation states.##

Urban spaces are seen as
transit and contact locations where differences meet, lifestyles are being
negotiated and global influences are interpreted locally in many ways. They
become urban everyday life, and the city is generator and catalyst of mobility.

Contributions of 15 authors of
various disciplines report, from their respective viewpoints, on comparison,
and this – so the editors – represents a panoramic meta-comparison.
Possibilities, problems and limits of comparatist methods are described. The
editors conclude: It will be important to clearly define the respective
function of a comparison or to recognize it if it is an interpretation of a
comparison. Objects may show similarities, because there are causal connections
between them, or because they emerge from comparable contexts. But analogies
can be contingent and meaningless also. Those people comparing should be clear
about the purpose why things are seen in relation. The race the normative,
There is the normative, convergent, the contrastive and that descriptive
comparison. All of them have, depending on the context and cognitive interest,
various functions. Those researchers focusing continuities and developments
will concentrate on convergent traits, those looking for crises and breaks will
enhance contrasts and so on. The idea of a really neutral unperspective
comparison is probably obsolete.

##Discussing the theoretical
linkage between intersectionality, social theory and social inequality

The following article argues that an in-depth analysis of different
living conditions requires a theoretical and empirical perspective which does
not only take into account class but also other categories of social inequality
such as gender, race and body. Departing from the idea that these categories
are mutually intertwined, the article suggests an intersectional multi-layeled
approach which allows to examine reciprocal effects between class, gender, race
and body on three different levels: the level of social structures, the level
of identity construction and the level of symbolic representation. Considering
the theoretical relationship between the analysis of class and social
inequality, the article also intends to understand and explain how these
different levels of analysis are interrelated, how the linkage between social
categories and levels of social reality have to be methodologically reflected
and how they can be made accessible in and through empirical research.##

Contributions in this volume propose to apply a socio-cultural
anthropological perspective IF health and disease are to be understood adequately
in a global context, pleading for inclusion of social and cultural dynamics in
the politics of the heterogeneous and power-laden field of „medicine“.

BÖHMIG, CHRISTINE: „This is not what I expected - I want to go'" Krankenschwestern
zwischen Erwartungen und Realität in einem ghanaischen Krankenhaus [Nurses
between expectations and reality in a Ghanaian hospital]

This article brings together theoretical approaches to the study of
appropriation, transculturalism and migration to explore contemporary Latin
American migrant experiences and social positioning in Aotearoa New Zealand. I
argue that migrants' experiences are mediated by New Zealand migration politics
and the country’s official definition as a bicultural nation. Simultaneously,
they are also shaped by migrants' individual aspirations and social conditions.
Drawing on fieldwork, I trace out the various ways individuals add meaning to
their new life circumstances and create successful migration biographies. I
argue that individual coping strategies such as appropriation, adaptation or
cultural withdrawal are ambiguous and sometimes contested, depending on the
viewpoints and social relations of the individuals involved.##

##Autonomous Technology as a
Challenge to the Sociological Theory of Action

The following paper sketches a sociological model which describes the
"coaction" of technology in a way that allows an empirical
investigation of the question of non-human agency. Bruno Latour's provocative
arguments are taken as a starting point to show that a sociological theory of
action, based on Hartmut Esser's model of sociological explanation, is able- to
cope with these questions. In order to describe the interaction of human actors
and non-human agents, we have, consequently, constructed a sociological model
to explain hybrid systems. A car-driving experiment which humans have to
cooperate with computer-simulated driver assistant systems has been chosen to
prove the potential of the model. The data show that humamn test persons indeed
attribute agency to the technical systems. Additionally, they describe the
relation of human and machine as symmetrical. Finally, we have discovered that
test persons also tend to attribute responsibility for the achievement of
certain objectives to the technical system - although the rules of the game
distribute responsibility equally between humans and non-humans.##

From
the Amazon to the Eastern Front. The expedition traveller and geographer Otto
Schulz-Kampfhenkel (1910-1989)

Zoologist and geographer
Schulz-Kampfhenkel undertook expeditions to Africa and the Amazon in the 1930s
which he quite effectively circulated, in the media and politically, in the
Third Reich, and he was made the „South America expert“ of the regime. He
declared his aim to conquer the last „white spots“ on earth for Germany, and in
secret military operations he went to the frontlines of World War II to do
geographical research for the Nazis. In the book, historians, anthropologists,
zoologists and media scientists analyze this „bizarre“ person and his career in
the areas of scholarship, the media, politics, and military.

Frank discusses the journey –
phenomenon and myth, that is, traveling as counter-worlds, the relations and
interactions of culture/space and borders or delimitations in this context.
This is followed by a „short history“ of experiencing the world – early
cosmopolitans, appropriating otherness in Early Modernity, the art of traveling
(ars apodemica). Then, the focus is on the traveller: self and alterity,
ethnocentrism and exotism, and how he/she appropriates „the world“, and even
the „postmodern search for the self“. The third part of the book is devoted to
global dimensions of encounter – those being visited, whether it is
imperialism, destruction of cultures, commercialization of culture, the
re-animation of traditions, and strenghtening of cultural identity: each of
these topics exemplified in the work of one (anthropological) author dealing
with the respective problem. In a final contemplation Frank deals with chances
and limits of approaching the other, „marginal man and culture broker“.

The
cancer of corporations. With contributions by Hans Peter Aubauer et al.

##The main thesis of this work
should not only identify an analytical isomorphism between the growth of
corporations and cancer (the way it metastasizes in living organisms), but also
prove this empirically. Experience with evolutionary epistemology serves as a
basis, which shows that substantial regularities already exist in subjacent
layers of evolution... Implementing the Dynamic Energy Budget Theory (DEB) of
Kooijman (2000), van Leeuwen et al. (2003) developed a tumor model which
focuses especially on the tumor-host interaction. It shows that the tumor
promotes this growth – analogous to corporations – by reducing growth- and
mainenance costs (in comparison to the host). These externalization processes
are mainly responsible for the growth of corporate structures... It is
demonstrated that there exists not only a qualitative-analytic but also an
empirically provable analogy between the growth of corporations and malignant
tumors.##

##The concept of
Appropriation in Qualitative Reception Studies. A Specification informed by the
Sociology of Knowledge with Respect to Cultural Studies Approaches

This paper discusses the currently very popular concept of appropriation
in (especially German) media audience studies, which is being developed by cultural
studies and focuses on the creativity and self-will of spectators. Despite the
fact that cultural studies researchers have, in this way, accomplished
pioneering work in terms of qualitative reception studies, there have been
tendencies to romanticize and idealize audience activity. In contrast to such
(post-structuralistic and interactionistic) positions and in continuation of
approaches in cultural studies which conceptualize appropriation as a specific
practice of reception this article proposes a specification inspired by the
sociology of knowledge and by the author's empirical findings. This leads to a
differentiation of productive vs. reproductive appropriation that is able to
further illuminate Stuart Hall's reading-triad: dominant; negotiated; oppositional.##

Anthropology
and ethnology at Leipzig in the late 1920s. The first meeting of the
Association of Ethnology and expeditions of the Saxon Research Institute

##The article describes the
relationship between physical anthropology and ethnology in Germany in the
years prior to 1933, with a particular focus on Leipzig. It was here that the
first conference of the Association of Ethnology in 1929, organized by Fritz
Krause, took place. Among the topics discussed at the conference was the role
of physical anthropology in relation to anthropological studies. Leipzig was
also the home of the Saxon Research Institute, which provided funds for several
ethnological expeditions. Physical anthropology - which at that time often
meant ‚racial science’ -was included in
field studies as well as in writing. This will be explored further by
discussing the expeditions of Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt, Paul Germann,
Joachim Hellmut Wilhelm, Bernhard Struck and Erich Bauer. To investigate the
relevance of relations between physical anthropology and ethnology in the past
is of historical interest, but it is also important for current discussions
about the cooperation between these two disciplines.##

The editors, sociologists,
frame the notion of emergence as the „appearance of traits of a structure whose
elements do not show those traits“. As an example, they name the V shape of a
flock of flying birds, based on neuronal processes which do not possess
consciousness, and they refer to the „social world“, e.g. groups or societies.
Frequently, according to the editors, there is the claim that emergent traits
of complex structures cannot be traced back („reduced“) to traits of their
elements which would necessitate other explanations. This would contradict the
claim for a near-complete explanation of reality, however. Papers in this
volume are by philosophers, sociologists, neuro-scientists, biologists, and
physicists.

Fear
and fascination. A new assessment of Franz Anton Mesmer’s animal magnetism

This is a brief study is
another attempt to understand and categorize Mesmer, including a
medical-anthropological perspective. Gruber does so by first referring to, and
utilizing Thomas Kuhn’s frame of paradigmatic change – by understanding Mesmer
as one such case, which becomes clear from his biography. She then describes
useful contexts, such as intellectual currents of his time, political and
ecclesiastical history, and the history of science. Mesmer’s life is another
context included, then in detail, theories and concepts of scientific
controversy, and a last chapter deals with effects of Mesmer’s method of animal
magnetism – in relation to scholarly debate, modern research of „life energy“,
psychology, music, literature, and philosophy.

In the context of globalization, cultural anthropology gained a new
momentum by highlighting the self-conscious persistence of cultural
differences. Against the background of an ever increasing intensity of societal
and economic entanglements, the vital claim of cultural differences must be a
reflexive process associated with the idea that one's own culture is creative
and adaptive to innovations. Anthropologists have defined a set of tools in
order to describe these processes of cultural changes. These tools have the
names of hybridization, creolization and domestication, but, in particular also
of cultural appropriation. Historically cultural appropriation was mainly
relevant in contexts of unequal power relations. Appropriation thereby became a
strategy of the powerless, who used appropriation in order to undermine the
structures defined by the powerful. Cultural appropriation can also be
practised through mimesis, and thereby negates the authority of powerful
actors. Cultural appropriation requires moments of negotiations and does not
aim at definitive results, but merely at the transgression of boundaries. Well
defined fields of cultural appropriation within anthropology are media studies
and consumption. Empirical approaches to a more detailed documentation of
appropriation can be the following: (1) Naming, (2) Contextualization, (3)
Incorporation and (4) material transformation.##

HANSEN,
KLAUS P.

Kultur und Kulturwissenschaft. 4.
Auflage

Tübingen:
A. Francke Verlag 2011

304 pp., Euro 18.90; ISBN
3-8252-3549-9

Keywords: cultural studies, culture

Culture
and cultural science. 4th edition

The book is intended to be a basic,
clear-cut introduction. The 4th edition positions the collective in the center
since, according to the author, it can explain dynamics, difference, and
change. The first chapter ‚normalizes’: thought, feeling, action, and deals
with institutions and collectivization. The second chapter is about the
individual and the collective (segmentation, ethnic collectives, pancollective
formations, interculturality etc.). Chapter V discusses collective perception,
chapter VI deals with competing notions of culture (material, functionalist,
cultural critique, semiotic, and transculturality).

Doubts considering the
„Frankfurt Declaration“ on ethics in anthropology

##The "Frankfurter Declaration" on ethics in cultural
anthropology has been voted for by an 'overwhelming majority' at a meeting of
the members of the "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde (DGV)",
which took place in October 2009 in Frankfurt am Main. The author, who has a
few criticisms of the "Declaration", belonged to the minority of
those present at the meeting who voted against it. The reasons for his opposition,
which will be explained in detail in the article, are the following: (1) On the
one hand the authors of the "Declaration" want to make it non-binding
by stressing that the planning and carrying out of anthropological research are
principally matters for individual responsibility. (2) On the other hand, all
those members who voted for the "Declaration" are obliged to profess
that individual dignity and responsibility take priority over collective
interests. This expressly assumes an image of humanity which is very limited
looked at cross-culturally because the individual is privileged as the main
criterion of ethically motivated decisions. No reason is given for this
Eurocentric attitude in a declaration by cultural anthropologists. (l) To
propose basic standards for ethically acceptable behaviour in doing
ethnographic fieldwork and in publishing the information obtained in a
declaration on ethics in cultural anthropology is, of course, welcome. But the
assertion that these standards will unavoidably lead into contradictions and
the impossibility of resolving this dilemma makes no sense. It can also be
questioned whether these basic standards will prove compatible with the theory
of cultural relativism.##

HEIDEMANN,
FRANK

Ethnologie. Eine Einführung

Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2011

285 pp., Euro 22.90; ISBN
3-8252-3467-6

Keywords: anthropology textbook, textbook
anthropology

Anthropology.
An introduction

This introduction to
socio-cultural anthropology with a bent for cultural studies ranges from early
evolutionism to cyber anthropology and is designed as a basic textbook suitable
for student learning also, including sections with questions and answers. The
book thus introduces major branches or subject areas of anthropology, such as
globalization, transnationalism, anthropologies of the body and medicine, the
senses and emotions, media, the visual. Therefore, Heidemann starts with two
fundamental concepts: culture, and methods (field work and participant
observation). The first hundred years cover evolutionism, diffusionism,
cultural relativism, the culture and personality school, functionalism,
structural functionalism, structuralism, and cognitive studies. The more recent
part covers the crisis of representation, the interpretive turn, postmodernism,
and postcolonial studies. Then, systematic areas are introduced: kinship,
economic anthropology, religious studies, political anthropology. The last
chapter deals with ethnicity and migration, transnationalism, urban
anthropology, medicine and related subjects, and media and cyber anthropology.

##What makes globalization possible? Explaining the
emergence of global horizons of comparison in science and sports

The
article conceives of globalization as a highly improbable phenomenon. In contrast
to the mainstream of the globalization literature, we ask under which
conditions the globalization of societal fields can potentially become an
empirical reality. We proceed in three steps: The second part presents an
explanatory model that identifies the conditions under which global horizons of
comparison may emerge. Our model is predicated on the assumption that the
globalization of societal fields is enabled not only by relational linkages
(“ties”) but by public comparative discourses (“cultural linkages”) too. In the
third part, we apply this model on the development of modern science and
competitive sports, proving the explanatory power of our model and showing that
in both cases global horizons of comparison first consolidated in the late 19th
century. The final part concludes with reflections on commonalities and
differences between the two cases, on the applicability of the model to other
social fields (e.g, economy) and on its implications for the analysis of
globalization processes.##

HELLMANN,
KAI-UWE

Fetische des Konsums. Studien zur
Soziologie der Marke

Wiesbaden:
VS Verlag 2011

298 pp, Euro 29.99; ISBN
3-531-16933-0

Keywords: brands,
consumerism,
fetishism of brands, magic of
brands

Fetishes
of consumerism. Studies on the sociology of brands

Citing Karl Marx, the author
starts by referring to the insight that products, as soon as they are
introduced to the market, undergo change. The product becomes a fetish, full of
metaphysical sophistication and theological peculiarities. Seen from this
perspective, present-day consumer society attributes fetish characteristics to
brands. Whether it is Coca Cola or the iPhone – certain brands emanate strong
fascination, they seem to have a special aura, drawing people as soon they find
them attractive. So the author argues that brands have become fetishes of
consumerism. The chapters of the book deal with functions and effects brands
have for consumers from a sociological perspective: the function of marketing
to mobilize customers, the advertisement value of brands, vaulues of brands,
the magic of brands, varieties of consumers, and distinction and consumerism.
Finally, a case of protest – an anti-Christmas movement is discussed.

Measuring
the social world. Neoliberalism, the extreme Right, migration in the focus of
debate

Starting point of the 21
contributions in this volume by various specialists as well as politicians are
processes of (neoliberal) globalization penetrating and influencing all areas
of life. This is done in the case of the crisis of the European Union, the
theory of democracy and the state, the globalization of war, but also
discussing perspectives of (leftist) political movements, and questions
resulting from these inquiries for political education. This also touches the
problem of poverty in an affluent society – espially the aspect of poverty of
children with and without migratory background. Other topics are migration and
integration, ethnization of social conflicts, and the increase of extreme
rightist ideologies. The authors also define necessities for preventing those
rightist ideologies. In doing so, the editors understand this volume as a
„measurement, or survey of the social world“.

HERBRIK,
REGINE

Die kommunikative Konstruktion
imaginärer Welten

Wiesbaden:
VS Verlag 2011

224
pp., Euro 36.99; ISBN 3-531-17585-0

Keywords: imaginary worlds,
communication,
constructing the imaginary

The
communicative construction of imaginary worlds

This study is generated in
five steps: explaining and contextualizing the topic – and the utilization of
the pen-and-paper role play in answering questions of the study. Then, notions
and concepts are presented. Herbrik portrays positions of the sociology of
knowledge regarding „communication“, as well as the imaginary and imagination
in the cultural and social sciences, in anthropology, also using game theory in
this context. The next chapter presents data generation and interpretation,
followed by describing specific communicative patterns of action pertaining to
dealing with the imaginary. The last chapter discusses the results and their
implications and scope.

##Religion and religiousness
as determinants of homonegativity. A multi-level analysis of 79 countries

Although the attitudes towards homosexuality have become more liberal
especially in industrializcd Western countries, there is still a huge variance
in terms of the levels of homo-negativity worldwide. This article secks to
explain this variance by means of a multi-level-analysis of 79 countries. The
data stem from the last two waves of the World Values Survey. On the basis of
this data, the article focuses on the power of the religious denomination of a
person and her religiousness in order to explain her attitude towards
homosexuality; for both variables a strong influence can be detected. In
addition, the article indicates that, on the individual level,
socio-demographic variables e.g. age, gender, education, marital status or
profession are highly interconnected with the intensity of homonegativity. On
the country-level, however, the main explanatory factors are both the economic
development and the communist heritage. The article further highlights
significant conditional relationships by introducing cross-level interactions
and interaction terms on the individual level. The final model explains about
60% of the variance on the aggregate level and 30% on the individual level.##

Historical psychology and
the development of mankind. The perspective of a fundamental theory

##The task of a universal history is to describe the development of
mankind. The questions for an historical psychology are (1) What are the
specifically psychological aspects of the developmental process? And (2) How
does culture influence the development of persons? The objectives oft he present
work are to show why it is not only interesting but essential to overcome the
widespread neglect of this area of inquiry, and to advance a basic theory oft
he psychology of the development of mankind.##

Status
and communication. Comparing speech acts in university e-mails and counseling
sessions/consultations

The author asks whether in the
style of institutional, hierarchically marked e-mails status difference is
evident o not – since private e-mail communication tends to be close to spoken
language. Based on speech act analysis an inventory of types of speech acts for
teachers and students has been generated focusing on communication regarding
exams. This allows for reconstruction of their performance, and to interpret it
according to parameters of institution, roles, and situations. The study shows
that the medium offers various spaces for insinuating and pointing to role and
status, that hierarchies are NOT overcome, and that specifically students
affirm their own and their teachers’ status continuously.

Knorr assesses
cyber-anthropology from the notion of culture as a starting point – using his
„pragmatic“ framing of culture to include in it all human thought and artifact,
beyond purely biological processes and reproduction and, i.e., innovation (14).
And this, consequently, includes all forms of communities, all cultures and
countries, not just „oral“ ones – and hence, cyber products and forms of
community. Having specified meaning in this way, Knorr considers for instance
cyber punk as „one, or the major
source of fictional material“ for understanding contemporary life worlds,
contemporary culture (29). In continuing his „encyclopaedic“ and essayistic
portrait of cyber-anthropology Knorr deals with cybernetics, cyberpunk, spaces
of game/play, hardware aspects, completed by a mediography. Knorr reports about
his long ethnographic fieldwork among the „Max Payne“ game online scene (MPHQ),
and he describes and interprets it anthropologically. Thus, users of this
complex interact online but import information and contents of their various
„real“ lifeworlds, e.g., nation states, and Knorr makes conclusions based on
his participation and observation of these processes. In the chapter on
hardware Knorr discusses modding practices comparatively (Sudan, Japan...).

##Beyond the paradigm of secularization?—A discussion
with Charles Taylor

Charles
Taylor’s book A Secular Age is a
widely appraised alternative to the classical paradigm of secularization
theory. This article situates this alternative theory within the debate of
sociology of religion on secularization and its sub-components. Three
requirements are formulated that alternative conceptions would have to met.
First, they need to understand why „secularity“ became such a prominent
category of self interpretation in modern societies. Second, they have to be
able to integrate years of cumulative sociological research on sub-processes of
secula-rization with findings on genuinely modern forms of religious vitality
emphasized by the classical paradigm’s critics. And in light of on-going
debates over multiple modernities, they would need to describe and explain the
varieties of differentiation in societal and cultural comparison. In critical
discussion of Charles Taylor’s contribution, the limits of culturalist theories
of modern secularity as well as some tasks for historical-sociological research
on religion in modernity are identified.##

##Hope or peace? Spaces of
the mobilization of transnational peace networks since the last Gaza war

After the last Gaza war in 2009, an unusual meeting of Israeli ex-soldiers
initiated a heated debate in the public domain. The soldiers confessed some
uncomfortable insights about apparently pointless violence, but an internal
investigation could not prove their allegations. At first glance, it seemed the
military contradicted itself. This paper aims to show that such confusing
events are not an isolated case, but the result of a strategy of mobilization
of global acting activism networks which include NGOs, international donors and
individual personalities. Based on fieldwork with Israeli activists and
critically inspired by debates on ethnography and globalization, I follow
complex configurations of actors that indicate zones of political friction.
Activists operate in key areas of state sovereignty, rather than to stand
opposed to it. There are two implications of the emerging power of these
nerworks: on the one hand, the conflict on the ground seems to be transformed
into a meta-conflict consisting only of signs and counter-sign; on the other it
is here emblematic how classical political units, such as the state
conceptualized as a unitary actor, seems at first glance to be dissolved, but
also reproduced in an iconic way.##

Being experienced as
foreign. Reading travelogues of Dorugu and Ham Mukasa

##Travelogues about other cultures, including accounts of Europe in
different centuries, have been told or written about in many societies
throughout the world. Recently anthropologists and historians have become aware
of these. In contrast to the well-established genre of Lettres persanes they offer a genuine perspective for an
interpretation of Europe from the outside. Moreover, travelogues about Europe
have heuristic value in understanding a specific hermeneutic situation, namely
reaclings of foreign travelogues and ethnographies about one's own or one's
ancestral culture in general, also being an aspect of crucial importance for
the study of globalisation in the longue
durée. I take two African travelogues as examples. Ham Mukasa, a literate,
English-speaking citizen of Buganda who visitecl England in 1902 to witness the
coronation ceremony of Edward VII, experienced Europe as a spectacle his hosts
had staged to impress, among others, guests from the colonies. But Mukasa also
expected something miraculous from the outset, using phrases and images from
the New Testament which he thought fitted the occasion. The second example, a
story told by Dorugu, an illiterate Hausa boy brought to Germany and England by
Heinrich Barth in 1856, shows us Europe from below from the perspective of a
servant. Both reports are correct as far as the facts are concerned, but the
sense expressed is not the sense Europeans had or have of themselves, or of
things European. It might be tempting to attribute the impression these reports
make on Europeans – the facts are correct, while the sense is missed - to the
naivety of these African travellers. Could such a finding be a quality of all
transcultural descriptions? At least, this is suggested by three Trobriand
readings of Malinowski's professional ethnography.##

##Modern theodicy and
functional differentiation - An analysis of histori-cal semantics on the
sociology of knowledge of modern society

The problem of theodicy is a specific phenomenon of the modern age.
Though when Max Weber introduced the term in a much broader sense into
sociology and based his sociology of religion on it, the actual empi-rical
phenomenon got concealed, considering the historical importance of theodicy for
the emergence of modern society, a sociological analysis is overdue. By means
of an analysis of historical semantics the paper shows the connection of
theodicy with the change of society's primary form of differentiation to
functional differentiation.##

Biological roots and
ethnological variety. Foundations of an anthropology of education

##The contribution deals with rearing an education in a broader
perspective, which includes data of biological anthropology and ethnology. The
aim is to contribute to an outline of rearing and education. After explaining
the concept „macro analysis“, after reflecting object and method in educational
science, relevant data from biological anthropology and ethnology were
presented. Emphasis was given to material derived from about 100 ethnological
monographs. The data displayed a great many of conformity in the general
educational processes of tribal cultures in spite of different subsistence
techniques, races, continents and climates. These conformities contrast to our
rearing and education and raise anthropo-logical questions. Two subjects are
discussed more in detail: the infancy and the youth.##

Keywords:
music and dance, dance and music, transnationalism, performance

##Race on Stage: Performing
Difference in Music and Dance in Paris, Havana and New York between the World
Wars

This article analyzes the contributions of internationally mobile
artists to cabaret performances referring to racial stereotypes between the
World Wars. Musicians, singers and dancers classified in Cuba as mulatos or negros and female artists who were not conceded an equal access to the
music business during the 1920s and 1930s seized new opportunities in the
context of New York's Harlem Renaissance and Paris' Tumulte Noir. They were
motivated to work in these cities not only for economical reasons, but also
because of the potentiality they ascribed to cabaret music and dance as means
for overcoming racism. I explore to what extent they were able to introduce
versions of "black culture" that differed from the exoticizing
representations privileged by "white" impresarios. The performances
are analyzed as sites in which heterogeneous actors inscribecl imaginaries of
race. Travelling beween the diverging racial regimes of the three cities (which
all constructed a similar bipolar racial order), the artists institituted more
realistic perspectives on music and dance on the transnational stages based on
their local knowledge. Ultimately these Cuban artists contributed to a
diversification of what was considered to be "black culture" in
Havana, Paris and New York.##

##In many pharmacopoeias and in comparison to the use of medicinal
plants, insects - or what is folk-classified as insects - undoubtedly are a
neglected issue. Moreover, with few exceptions, there are also scarce
ethnographic data on the therapeutic value of insects within indigenous healing
systems. Most research on this topic has been carried out on Asian medical
systems, where ancient and modern written sources prove that the use of insects
and other arthropods as prophylactics, medicine and food is a fairly widespread
practice. More recently, especially in Latin America and Africa there have also
been several projects concerning the folk-use of insects. In the last two
decades, medicinal insects have attracted more and more attention as bioscience
has been discovering its highly specific chemical substances as defensive
mechanisms or against microbial infestation for its possible pharmaceutical
application. In this article I establish a relationship between the history of
ethnoentomology and popular medical use of insects, and how this knowledge has
significantly contributed to modern pharmacological research.##

The book and its 27 papers are
based on the conference „The globalization of the uses of Ayahuasca: An Amazonian
psychoactive and its users“ at the Institute of Medical Psychology, Heidelberg
University, Germany, in May 2008.

##The conference brought
together some of the world’s most important experts from different disciplines
such as medicine, psychology, ethnobotany, pharmacology, law, religious
science, and anthropology involved in research on ayahuasca,, and promoted a
mutual dialogue with diverse ayahuasca users including western ayahuasca
adepts, Amazonian healers, religious leaders and activists. We gathered
contributions from the majority of participants, as well as some additional
collaborators... The book seeks to describe and analyze the diverse forms of
ayahuasca use throughout the world from a multidisciplinary perspective. It was
our specific goal not reduce the varieties of practices, experiences and
scientific perspectives into a single model or to provide a simplified risk
assessment. Instead the book makes available a general overview of the topic,
ranging across multiple cultural, health and legal aspects. Like the expansion
of ayahuasca itself, the addition includes voices from the north and south,
from urban and rural areas, from scientific and spiritual perspectives: in a
word, a range of discourses from across a continuum of hybrid possibilities.##

##The individual and the
mixing of genres - Cultural dissonances and self-distinction

By considering cultural practices and preferences in terms of
intra-individual behavioral variation it is possible to construct a model of
the social world which does not neglect individual singularities and avoids the
cultural caricature of social groups. Thus, it becomes clear that the boundary
between "cultural legitimacy" and "cultural illegitimacy"
does not only separate different social classes, but divides up the cultural
practices and preferences of individuals themselves across all classes. Without
challenging the existence of social inequalities in terms of the most
legitimate forms of culture, such a scientific point of view allows to
establish the marked statistical frequency of individual cultural profiles
composed of heterogeneous or dissonant elements. The article considers the
socio-historical conditions that produce heterogeneous cultural profiles and
shows that these frequent cultural dissonances allow to reinterpret the social
functions of culture and to highlight the importance of the study of
intra-individual behavioral variations within the framework of a sociology of
dispositional and contextual plurality.##

Lemke acknowledges strong
traces of the „crisis of representation“ in social research. She takes up these
traces in reflecting on research on an art-pedagogical project,
„sense&cyber“for the use of new media in four art schools in Lower Saxony,
Germany. Using Rabinow’s and Latour’s notions her study moves from „small
points of observation“ (oligoptics) of „hypermedial ethnography“ to rough
contours of a „pedagogical anthro-pology of the contemporary“. She considers
this to be an innovative approach for an ethnographic philosophy in the area of
education studies.

##This volume consists mainly of papers originally presented at an
international conference "Algorithms of Power - Key Invisibles" at
Jacobs University Bremen in January 2010, sponsored by the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); the TZI Center for Computing Technologies,
University of Bremen; and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jacobs
University Bremen. All papers were improved in the light of the discussions and
supplemented by further international contributions. We gratefully acknowledge
the financial support of the DFG for the publication of this volume, as part of
our research project "Automatic Detection and classification of persons as
Key Visual Candidates."##

LUDES, PETER: Towards Bridging The
Semantic Gap Between Key Visual Candidates and Algorithms of Power

MÜLLER, JAN& MARTIN STOMMEL: Heads of State and Common People: Perspectives from the Computer and
Social Sciences

##‚Merging horizons' is an epistemological stance adopted by anthro-pologists
who aim to share an ethos of equality with the people they study. In the
process, both parties – observer and observed – explore how far their views of
the world coincide and how far they differ. We have used this concept of
merging horizons not only to characterise our various activities as students,
researchers and teachers of anthropology, but also to throw light on our
personal relationship. What does it mean to do fieldwork as a couple? What were
our different backgrounds, and how did we meet, bond, separate, and bond again?
How did our interests develop? How far did they coincide and how did they
differ? The story is told with an eye on the figurative power of events, as
well as on the many surprises and reversals that have occurred in the drama of
our lives.##

MACKERT, JÜRGEN

Im Auftrag des Staates. Die geheime Gesellschaft der Folterer

Berliner Journal für
Soziologie 21.2011:431-459

Keywords:
torture, state and torture, Simmel, G., secret society

##In the name of the state.
The secret society of the torturers

Torture is an extreme act of collective violence that is secretly
executed in the name of a state. In order to explain the reasons why people
torture others, individualist approaches concentrate on individuals' motives or
interests. Contrary to that, the article argues that torture should be
understood as a social relation. Thus, it takes the social relations of the
group of torturers as a starting point. Firstly, following Georg Simmel's
analysis of the secret society the paper argues that the group of torturers can
adequately be conceptualized as a secret society; secondly, against this
background the article reconstructs the conditions which structure torturers'
agency; finally, this article offers an outline of the processes and dynamics
that allows for explaining the phenomenon of torture. The thesis of the article
argues that a relational sociology helps better explain and understand the
social phenomenon of torture.##

Culture, Volk, and race. German
anthropology during National Socialism and its reappraisal

##German anthropology has started to deal with ist own role during
National Socialism just since the eighties. Although important research has
been conducted since then, significant issues remain to be discussed.
Therefore, the following article aims at two subjects in order to arouse
further debate. On the one hand, the theoretic and practical conjunctions
between anthropology and National Socialism are being analysed. On the other
hand, the postwar anthropological examination of the own past itself shows
specific reductions and rationalisations which are to be explored. They
indicate that form and content of dealing with the National Socialist past
still shape today's anthropology.##

This book presents an overview
of the development and current situation of Grounded Theory methodology. The „founders“
present their positions and research strategies, in papers and interviews, and
prominent „practitioners“ of the method discuss challenges of Grounded Theory –
epistemological preconditions and research practice.

The field score.
Multi-coding transcription of video data in qualitative social research

The author defines the field score as a sign and symbol system for the
multi-codal transcription of video data, for researchers in the social sciences
and humanities working qualitatively. Using this method video data are no
longer exclusively directly translated into text data as done in current
transcription conventions, but audiovisual processual data will be captured by
transmitting carriers of meaning in a two-axes system, a score: in their
linearity, and by using signs and symbols also in their simultaneity. This is
based on the assumption that videos, based on images, sound, and process data
are to be taken as an individual system of expression, symbols and signs –
vis-à-vis the system of language. Thus they can be captured only to a small
degree of its components, contained in the medium, with the methods of text
transcription. All of this is explicated in theory, with three case
descriptions.

CouchSurfing as
socio-cultural practice. Alternative tourism in the age of the Web 2.0

The author considers CouchSurfing to be „alternative tourism“ in the age
of the web 2.0, since more than three million registered users offer places to
stay overnight („on their couch“) in the internet – for free, on the condition
of mutuality. In the book this transnational network of hosts is researched –
focusing socio-cultural practices of the users. With a perspective of the
cultural sciences/folklore studies he inquires into questions of delimitations
and their opposite, and on action strategies and styles of traveling. The
author finds the members of this „community“ to be scattered around the globe,
coming from bourgeois and middle class settings and influenced by post-Fordist
patterns of living such as the intersection, or interconnection of leisure and
work, and they tend to instrumentalize „online/offline structures“. The study
is based on empirical work: participant observation, qualitative interviews as
well as quantitative online questionnaire.

In the book basic relations of an illegal or corrupt kind are analyzed
as ‚institutions’ creating types of order: political clientelism, corruption,
Mafia, warlords, terror – using theories of social capital, systems- and
network theories, the economy of institutions, enlarged property rights
concepts, and a concept of second-life economy. The Mafia, Yakuza, and Kenyan
interfaces of political and economic corruption are a special focus, as are
conditions for stability of corruption and mafiose structures and their
‚achievements’ (regardless of their illegal character).

##Cultural Heritage or
Intellectual Property Rights? Local strategies in Dealing with Cultural
Resources

Cultural Heritage and Intellectual Property Rights are two means of
protecting cultural achievement. They are western concepts that have been
widely adopted by nation states in the course of globalisation and promoted by
arguments of the circulation and preservation of cultural goods in the interest
of humankind. The international discussion on immaterial cultural property
generally neglects the existence of local concepts of rights in cultural
institutions and their history. This article analyses local concepts of rights
in immaterial cultural goods in southwest cameroon. It illustrates the
importance of their history for the understanding of what exactly is preserved
by cultural heritage. In the course of the growing transatlantic trade
activities, the owners of localized cults and rituals transformed these
institutions into an alienable resource. Since then interested parties were
able to acquire them under certain conditions, use them for income generation
and sell them to other interested parties. The sale concerned not the rights of
original creators but those of ownership and performance. Since the 1990s,
these cultural institutions were increasingly understood as exclusive,
traditional cultural goods restricted to specific administrative units. This development
has to be seen within the framework of the UNESCO activities of preserving
cultural heritage on the national level. In this way, the UNESCO encourages the
establishment of concepts of traditional culture owned by ethnic groups even
though theses cultural goods may have been acquired rather recently and are
owned by groups of individuals who paid others for obtaining their ownership
rights.##

##The Message of the
Seventies - An Obliging Heritage for 'Ethno-medicine' in the 21st century?

Invited by Joachim Sterly/Hamburg to co-found the Society for
Ethnomedicine (AgE) (1970) I worked together with him and Wemer Stöcklin/Basel
to build up the journal Ethnomedizin/Ethnomedicine journal for
interdisciplinary research (1971). I felt attracted by the interdisci-plinary
perspective of both of these projects and lived to see the growing insight into
the inter-ethnical analogies and the concepts of the knowledge to cure
("Heilwissen") in other cultural communities. As a doctor in
rehabilitation medicine I discovered the (psycho) therapeutic way of this
ethno-medical perspective, especially in the context of family dynamics. On the
other hand I was irritated by the fact, that there was much knowledge with the
many disciplines in our society, but no ability and skills to work with the
dynamics of our group in using its scientific and personal resources. My paper will
show that researchers and their objects in the social fields are building up
new group-settings. The developmental chance of this group-setting depends on
communicating the experiences of these group members in mutual respect. In this
attitude Georges Devereux (Paris) agreed with us, when we discussed our
research with him.##

There are 30 articles in this festschrift celebrating the 60th birthday,
following Bierschenk’s motto that the field determines what is there, what is
to be done, following the „social realities of the field“, avoiding naive
empiricism or romantic idealization of local voices. He has worked on the state
and statehood, development, local forms of power, and strategic Fulbe groups,
all based on long-term field research, mainly in West African Benin and the
sultanate of Oman. He has focused on that which is „in process“, hybrids,
contradictions... – to discover sources of social dynamics, innovation and
change.

„Phenomena of everyday life“ should, according to the author, be considered
as important in cultural analysis. This volume includes several studies on
technology and civilization, embodiment and experience, material culture and
museum, and spheres of the unconscious in culture and cultural science. Taking
the artifact, a gesture etc. as starting points, the author proceeds to wider
cultural historical and theoretical contexts in order to show in such cases how
to read „signatures of culture“.

SCHINDLBECK, MARKUS

,,Humboldts Vermächtnis". Eine Antwort auf Larissa Förster

Paideuma 57.2011:251-265

Keywords:
museology, exhibitions

„Humboldt’s legacy“. An
answer to Larissa Förster

##This article replies to the exhibition review by Larissa Förster by
explaining the context of the exhibition and its setting in a wider
perspective. A good review of an exhibition should include some research into
the conditions and the time schedule that are decisive for the success of such
an enterprise. Mainly two factors were decisive for the final shape of the
exhibition "Anders zur Welt kommen": the political influences of
representatives of the main cultural institutions involved, and the rather
short time period of less than one year for an exhibition of over 1500 square
metres. The main misunderstanding of the review lies in the fact that Förster
uses statements made by the political representatives of the cultural
institutions and compares them with statements by the work of the curators in
the exhibition. The exhibition was never intended as a preview of the planned
Humboldt-Forum but to give some idea of the work in progress. Normally this is
not done. Neither the new museum in Paris nor other large institutions put on
special exhibitions as previews of their new museums. In this context it is
also evident that an exhibition can never touch and deal with all possible
themes. And even if the presentation of the subject of colonialism is
important, that does not mean that every special exhibition has to deal with
it. The exhibition 'Anders zur Welt kommen" offered several new
perspectives not only in its design and presentation, but also in how it
described and explained objects which will be further developed in future
exhibitions of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin.##

##Publicness as a
Methodological Principle. The Scope of a Basic Tenet of Practice Theory

##The assumption that social practices are public and thus observable is
a basic tenet of practice-theoretical approaches. On the one hand, the
"publicness assumption" defines the praxeological criticism of
subjecti-vism as well as of relying on hypothetical structural entities. On the
other hand, a certain conception of the "publicness assumption"
allows critics to reproach praxeology for its limited analytical scope. In this
article, we explicate in several steps the contentious - and often implicit -
basic assumption that social practices are public in several steps. We sketch a
notion of social practices and their fundamental "publicness" which
avoids presentist misinterpretations and conceptualises sociality as chains of
practices across time and space. We do so by referring to the works of
Schatzki, Wittgenstein, Giddens, and Latour. In these, the carriers of
practices (artifacts, symbols, media, bodies) and the translocal structures
they establish acquire particular significance. In a further step, we present
some methodological considerations corresponding to the "publicness
assumption" and exemplify these by referring to Bourdieu's study of
"Distinction".##

Since the 1990s, the Internet serves as a projection space for varied
visions of a more transparent and integrative public sphere and a less dominant
role of mass media in the social construction of a "common" reality.
In light of those expectations, this text scrutinizes the relations between
digital social media and mass media from a systems-theoretical perspective and
observes the present preferences of German onliners as well as the content
quality of network communications (weblogs, podcasts, social networking
services, microblogging). The investigations lead to the conclusion that social
media and mass media are situated on comple-mentary levels of publicness.##

SCHROEDER, JENS

‚Killer games’ versus ‚We
will fund violence’. The perception of digital games and mass media in Germany
and Australia

##While the assessment of digital games in Germany is framed by a
high-culture critique, which regards them as an illegitimate activity, they are
enjoyed by a wider demographic as a ‚legitimate' pastime in Australia. The book
analyses the social history of digital gaming in both countries and relates it
to their socio-cultural traditions. Concerning social history, Australia almost
depicts an inverse mirror image of Germany. Its foundational dynamics, closely
associated with different egalitarianisms, led to a different form of
distinction than in Germany - a country whose national self-conception was
closely related to groups which perpetuated an idealistic notion of Kultur and
later integrated it into a rigid class system. The book not only demonstrates how
the discourses on games follow long-established patterns of rejection and
approval of mass media but also regard them as an access to the inner workings
of both societies. How the games are perceived tells us a lot about German and
Australian identity.##

Medical work is deeply mediated by technology. In line with
constructivist studies of medicine and technology, this paper conceptualizes
routine medical work as being fundamentally marked by uncertainty and
indeterminate situations. To account for the agency of the means of medical
practice in such situations, current discussions about the agency of technology
are critically reflected and adapted to the analysis of medical technologies.
Drawing on ethnographic observations in operating theaters this paper traces
the empirical distribution of medical work between ensembles of humans and
machines as well as the handling of uncertainties in daily practice.##

Contemporary sociological theoretizing about social memory affords two
alternatives: either theories follow the suggestions of Halbwachs and ground
social memory in collective interactions, or they start from processes of
functional differentiation and connect the formation of social memory to key
media and dominant forms. In discussing both variants of the sociological understanding
of social memory, we identify factors of variation and selection in its
formation. As factors of variation we identify functional, cultural, and
generational differentiation, mediality, authen-ticity, and the communicative
genres of narrativity and discursivity. These factors are combined with
relevance as a mechanism of selection within a theory of the formation of
social memory based on the sociology of knowledge.##

SIMON, UDOET AL. (Eds.)

Reflexivity, media, and visuality.
Including an E-book-version in PDF-Format on CD-ROM

##Held in Heidelberg from September 29 to October 2, 2008 by the
collaborative research center SFB 619 "Ritual Dynamics", the
international conference "Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual"
assembled most of the leading experts on rituals studies and more than 600
participants for the purpose of reassessing the traditional subject in view of
the latest research. The results, which are presented in five volumes, are
pathbreaking for future transcultural, interdisciplinary and multimethodical
research on rituals. The convention was marked by the broad range of
disciplines and the corresponding diversity of methods. It embraced a great
variety of topics in terms of cultural geography and spanned a time horizon
from antiquity to the present. The proceedings show how broadly the term ritual
can be defined, as well as the conditions, modes and functions of ritual
actions in different cultures of the present and past.##

Stegbauer deals with everyday social reciprocity in this introductory
textbook. He argues that causes for this behavior are not to be sought in
individual purpose-means calculations but is rooted in the relations of the
partners of exchange. There is no single-dimensional principle in this kind of
reciprocity, but relations between those exchanging govern the way and value of
products being exchanged. Thus, the author starts by using Marshall Sahlins’s
categories of direct and generalized reciprocity, and continues by discussing
the reciprocity of roles, of perspectives, in order to conclude by designing a
„sociology of social relations“.

STEINHOFF, HEIKE

Queer buccaneers.
(De)Constructing boundaries in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN film series

##Pirates
captivate the western cultural imagination at the beginning of the 21st
century. QUEER BUCCANEERS addresses this phenomenon through an analysis of the
Disney film series PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Reading the films from a variety
of post-structuralist perspectives, this study demonstrates the contradictory
discourses and power relations that characterize the series. It argues that
'piracy' constitutes a sliding signifier that facilitates the (de)construction
of discursive boundaries of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class and
nationality.##

##Domestications of
foreignness. The Interpretation of Trance and Possession in Anthropology and in
the Culture of Mediumistic Healing

The handling of trance and possession is often brought into focus in
anthropological literature and has challenged rational explanations. The
interpretation of such experiences leads to questions concerning the
conceptualizing of the body and the soul, and thus „the Self“ as well as
leading to the question of the relation between "the Self" and
"the Other". The emic
discourse of the mediumistic healers in Germany I have researched as well as
the etic discourse of anthropologists
about experiences of trance and possession in religious contexts oscillate between
finding the origin of such experiences inside and outside the Self. On the one
hand "spirits", "Energies" and similar things are seen as
autonomous entities affecting the Self, while on the other hand they are seen
as having originated in the Self through projections of the unsconscious or
through imagination. Even some phenomenological approaches which actually aim
to conceptualize experiences beyond dichotomies such as inner and outer or the
Self and the Other, like the much cited approach of Thomas Csordas, tend to
entangle themselves in such dichotomies and tend to trace back experiences of
the other as having originated in the Self. This paper traces different emic and etic conceptions of body, soul, the Self and the other and, against
this background, argues with reference to the German philosopher Bernhard
Waldenfels for a phenomenology of otherness which is grounded in the assumption
of an otherness of experience itself and offers an alternative to one-sided
externalizing or internalizing inter-pretations.##

The author assesses Christian mission, Catholic and Protestant, as a way
of globalization, very much in concord with colonialism. The focus is not on
„theological visions of Christianity and belief“ but on social processes
triggered by mission, social manifestations of the „missionary situation“.
Wendt thus focuses on specific local situations and discusses mission
settlements as locations of social order, forms of missionary segregation
politics, education and mission, indigenous helpers and native clericals. The
final sections deals with the „missionary society“ as a global-historical
factor.

Ethnology and psychology.
The Leipzig School of the psychology of peoples

In Germany, the disciplines of ethnology and psychology emerged in
Leipzig. The author describes the relations between them exemplarily in seven
influential persons: Adolf Bastian, Wilhelm Wundt, Friedrich Ratzel, Karl
Weule, Alfred Vierkandt, Richard Thurnwald and Willy Hellpach. These scholars
propagated distinct concepts of their fields, like: anthropology as ethnic
psychology (Bastian); psychology of peoples as psychic evolutionary history
(Wundt); anthropology as historical cultural geography (Ratzel); anthropology
as cultural foundational science (Weule); anthropology as ethnic sociology
(Vierkandt); psychology of peoples as social ethno-psychology (Thurnwald);
psychology of peoples as ethno-characterology. Another chapter is devoted to
the idea of structure in ethnology and psychology, which is elaborated in the
case of Felix Krueger and Fritz Krause, and influences of this approach to
structure is briefly described in ten other scholars. The final chapter asks if
there are remnants of the idea of structure even today: in the context of time,
in persons, and in contents.

Ziemann argues that late-modern society has developed a rigid dependence
on media technologies and (audio-visual) mass media. This has led to an
operational adaption and change of structure in many societal areas, but also
new ways of thinking, worlds of imagination, forms of action of subjects have
emerged. The author problematizes the reciprocal, or mutual relation of
production and dependence of media, society, and subject, and confronts the
sociological theory of society with observations in the areas of cultural
history and changing media science. He concludes that media culture has to be
conceded a categorial and also practical pre-eminence.

ZIPS, WERNER& MARKUS
WEILENMANN(Eds.)

The
governance of legal pluralism. Empirical studies from Africa and beyond

##The notion of governance
subsumes analytic approaches that have recently become highly popular in social
sciences. It directs attention to a holistic understanding of the participation
of non-state actors in political processes, the resulting policies, their
facilitation and implementation, but also their threats and social
consequences. This volume assembles empirical studies from Africa, Asia, the
Middle East, and Latin America to shed light on the complex governance
interactions determined by different constellations of legal pluralism and, in
turn, reshaping these dynamic arrangements.##

Violence and gender. Perspectives
in the social sciences on sexualized violence

Sexualized assault has always been part of personalized and organized
violence, in civilian contexts, in spaces open to violence, or in war.
Present-day violence and conflict, however, show increased sex-based cruelty,
and one may ask whether such forms of injury, torture and mutilation are new
forms of violence. This has been researched only marginally until now.

Police traffic checks in West Africa are normally only mentioned with
reference to corruption. Yet anthropological research of these everyday
bureaucratic interactions can also develop how police officers implement the
law, refer to morality and sociality. Police practices evolve in adaptation to
internal and external conditions and must constantly be socially legitimized.
On the everyday level, the police are not enforcers of the state's monopoly on
violence, but must establish their dominance through negotiation. Thereby the
discretion of police officers is guided by multiple rationalities or registers.
In order to countervail uncertainties in specific situations they dynamically
choose registers which are not clearly separated, and they often draw them
simultaneously. Selecting violence, public order, formal law, or sociality
enables heterogeneous and ambiguous police work, in the face of missing formal
guidelines and low legitimacy of the police. Corruption can be understood as a
special subset of police discretion, as deviant and functional practices at the
margins of it. Law and social order remain meaningful during these
interactions, even if they are ultimately violated. Since the actual use of
registers is highly influenced by civilians, police rationality can be seen as
the result of everyday negotiations. Civilians have considerable means of
influencing the police through the use of violence, connections, status and
money. Police action cannot be understood as unilateral enforcement of either
the state's laws or private interests; rather it is open to expectations and
social beliefs of civilians. Adaptation and openness of police practices reveal
that the implementation of laws and the reproduction of social order are
co-produced by civilians, which enables a new perspective on police practices
inside and outside of West Africa.##

##"Ground work"
and „paper work" Access to police organisations in West Africa

Drawing on our experience requesting access to police organisations in
Ghana and Niger, this article explores the organisation and operation of two
West African bureaucracies. It focuses on the administrative modes and the
state agents' routines in their dealing with civil actors. Exceptional and risk
carrying requests such as ours concerning a permission to conduct participant
observation in police organisations create insecurity on the part of the
bureaucrats concerned. Although rarely expressed in field reports and often
discounted as a series of fortunate coincidences, we consider the researcher's
access (or refusal) a crucial and illuminating moment of fieldwork. In our
case, both technical bureaucratic operations and informal networks played a
central role in our own approach as well as in the state agents' work routines
and reflections on their daily occupation. Following an emic description, we
call these two modes of procedure "ground work" and "paper
work". The oscillating between the two reflects an inevitable interlacing
of bureaucratic and informal operations, characteristic for bureaucratic
organisations worldwide.##

##Hunting for Pirates. The
Development of copyright in the context of Orality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Author rights have developed from centuries of legal acquisition of
immaterial goods in the Western hemisphere. A pressing question in this context
concerns the meaning and the effects which the imposition by the imperial West
of these legal structures has upon legions of the world that had and will continue
to have their own sets of rules concerning the treatment of such goods. This
article will discuss the local practices concerning the treatment of
intellectual property in sub-Saharan Africa before examining the local
interpretation of the newly introduced regulations and concepts. It will be
shown how local agents, aware of the challenges these new laws entail, succeed
in benefiting from their disadvantaged status and from positive law. They
explicitly achieve this by complaining about pirates robbing them of their
respective returns and blaming the state for its inefficiency in upholding the
author rights.##

##Creole configurations of
return migration between coercion or the search for refuge. The meaning of
return visits in Cape Verde

Based on anthropological research on Fogo and Brava, two Cape Verdean
islands, this article focuses on migrant return visits and their particular
meaning for "regrounding home", understood as an idea, a social
construcrion as well as a physical place. After reflecting on the
particularities of Cape Verde as a creole and transnational society since its
historical beginnings, the author examines the banderona, a patron saint festivity, which since centuries annually
draws thousands of migrants back to their islands of origins. What initially
served as a hierarchic moment between colonial masters and slaves, later turned
into a transnational ritual, used for celebrating the upward social mobility of
migrant visitors and for redistributing their material gains. In our days these
ritualized return visits constitute an important opportunity for reaffirming
social ties and for negotiating asymmetric family relations. While non-migrant
islanders make use of the festivity for articulating their needs and for
claiming diasporic support, migrants express their social visibility and their
willingness to contribute to a transnational livelihood. The author analyzes
this articulated interest in maintaining home ties also in the context of the
most recent shifts in the world economy, which force migrants to reassess their
living arrangements in the diaspora as well as the viability of an eventual
permanent return.##

This introduction outlines the theoretical framework of this special
issue on "Afro-Atlantic Alliances". After summarizing key moments in
the history of anthropological research along the Atlantic rim, the authors
reflect on the interdisciplinary encounter which shapes the current debate on
Afro-Atlantic cultures. By introducing "alliances" as a conceptual
framework, ideas of relatedness and belonging as well as of entangled histories
are recomposed in order to establish a methodology which aims at
provincializing the traditional centers of power and at overcoming a
methodological nationalism. This special issue brings together contri-butions
on the impact of historical forms of return migration to Sierra Leone, on the
meanings of contemporary migrant return visits to Cape Verde; on Mozambican
students' agency in Cuba as well as in their country of origin; on Cuban
artists' impact on race as an outcome of travelling between and performing in
Havanna, Paris and New York; on transnational Yoruba religious networks in Cuba
as well as on Cuban and Brazilian actors' strategies with regard to their
religious practices and their migrant status in Germany. In the afterword to
this thematic issue recent paradigm shifts in the study of the Afro-Atlantic
world are discussed.##

The West – Sodom and
Gomorrah? Western women and men in the focus of Egyptian muslimas

The author poses the question of how Egyptian Muslimas conceptualize the
western world – as utterly depraved, the women living in the terror of seeming
freedom? In this way she reverses the common perspective. Her study is based on
fieldwork, describing living conditions of urban Egyptian women – family,
partners, profession, religious questions, emancipation, and modernity, and she
found very differentiated answers, much more diverse than the image of a Sodom
and Gomorrah described in the media. She deals with patriarchal Egypt society,
the ‚fight’ in the mini-universe of the family, ideas on the ideal male
partner, what jobs mean to them, and the question of feminism.

FRUTH, BARBARA

The CBD in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC): The project "The Cuvette Centrale as a reservoir
of medicinal plants" in the process of implementation

##The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has three major
objectives: 1) the conservation of biological diversity, 2) the sustainable use
of its components, and 3) the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits. Here
we exemplify implementation of the convention in DRC by presenting history
concept and vision of the project "The Cuvette
Centrale as reservoir of medicinal plants". Special attention is paid
to local plant diversity with focus on medicinal plants, striving towards a
better understanding of their threats and safeguard. For this, we document
diversity and traditional use of plants in both (a) the country's interior and
(b) the urban area of Kinshasa. Both in- and ex-situ measures designed for the
conservation and sustainable use of specific plant resources for local and
regional levels are presented. In order to develop visions beyond, the project
has started a process of bringing together users and providers on a bilateral
level to assess ways suitable to all parties to directly benefit from the
utilization of indigenous plant resources towards the conservation of
biological diversity and the sustainable use of its components. We show the
current state of this process developing guidelines for a bottom-up approach of
CBD implementation adapted to traditional requirements. The example shows both
the potential as well as the urge for DRC to use its biological resources
sustainably in order to safeguard them for future generations. It discusses the
significance of the Nagoya Protocol adopted at the 10th Conference of the
Parties in October 2010 for this and future processes.##

FRUTH, BARBARA ET AL.

Care for Health and Body: An
Ethnobotanical Approach to Nkundo Plant Use (Cuvette Centrale, DRC) with Focus
on the Significance of Indigenous Knowledge for the Human Skin

##The data presented here are based on a long-term study sponsored by
the Federal Ministry of Education and Research on assessing the floral
diversity of the Congo Basin with a focus on medicinal plants. Between 2002 and
2007, interviews concerning 446 vernacularly known plants were held with one of
over 250 ethnic groups living in DRC, the Nkundo belonging to the Bantu people.
Of these plants, about 85% were used, with the largest proportion, about 60% of
all ethnospecies, applied in the medicinal context. 91 of 201 species used in
medicinal applications, belonging to about 50 families, were applied in the
context of skin problems. They were grouped into 12 disease groups. Most
species were cited as being applicable for wounds, abscesses and ectoparasites,
less lor onychia, mycosis, burns and eczema and least for allergies, ulcers,
acne, aphtes and dermatosis. Here, we investigate the botanical, ethnospecific
and phytochemical characteristics of the species cited. We assess the relation
of plant secondary compounds and area of application and seek generalities as
well as specificities of the skin-specific plants represented in
Nkundo-pharmacopeia by reviewing literature on African medicinal plants used
outside DRC. Our analyses are intended to document and assess the traditional
knowledge of the Nkundo, which has only been transmitted orally up to now. ln
this way, we hope to prevent its loss and to underline both the need for and
significance of the floral diversity of the Cuvette Centrale, both for its
traditional use and the protection of a world heritage site for nature and thus
mankind.##

GUFLER, HERMANN J.

„The land has become bad“
Finding a solution to the troubled relationship between the Ntul and the past
fons of Oku (Cameroon)

Archiv für Völkerkunde 59-60.2009:107-124

Keywords:
Fons of Oku, Ntul clan, Mbele clan, divination, land rights

##In this paper I would like to examine one problem, which has been
haunting the kingdom of Oku from its beginning up to the present time, viz.,
the troubled relationship between the Fons of Oku and the Ntul clan, the
original inhabitants of Oku. The „Ntul problem“ seems to show its ugly head
whenever the „land has become bad,“ i.e., when Oku is confronted with serious
problems, either external or internal. The divinersconsulted at such times, invariably diagnose
the problem as going back to the usurpation of power by the immigrant Mbele
clan. According to one tradition it was Mkong Mote, the most important and, by
now, with many legends surrounded ancestral Fon of Oku, who seized power from
Baba ǝbfon, the king of the Ntul. Another version, documented by Bah
(1996), attributed this feat to Nchiy, third in the King list given by Babɛy Ghande.##

The Krio are descendants of liberated slaves, who, on the background of
heterogeneous origins, developed a new ethnic identity. They tended to set
themselves apart from the local population and differentiated among themselves
by ascribing different degrees of purity to members of their community with
purity being equated with non-mixture with locals. They were not considered
"proper" natives by the local population and being a minority living
almost exclusively in Freetown were seldom considered for political office
beyond the local level. However, an increasing number of Krio have recently
become politically engaged on the national level. Simultaneously, processes of
selective indigenization are under way which help reconstruct Krio origins in
ways that allow them to situate themselves in the national context more
prominently. Their engagement nevertheless evokes ambivalent reactions. Being
somewhat less "one’s own" and less "native" still bears
negative connotations but as the reputation of tradition and indigeneity has
suffered as a result of the war, being less associated with either also carries
new and positive meanings. It seems that in this time of contested loyalties
and identifications, the Krio are increasingly discovering and making use of
the potentials of transethnic connectivity that lie in their creole heritage.##

KRECH, HANS

The Growing Influence of
Al-Qaeda on the African Continent

Africa Spectrum 46,2.2011:125-137

Keywords:
Al-Qaeda, terrorism, international terrorism, Islamism

##Al-Qaeda's influence in Africa is growing. From 2009 to 2011, activity
by Al-Qaeda was noted in 19 African nations and regions. Four regional Al-Qaeda
organizations operate on the continent, which in turn often have several
sub-organizations: the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Libyan Islamic Frghting
Group, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (with its sub-organizations Al-Qaeda in
Mali, Al-Qaeda in Mauritania, Al-Qaeda in Morocco and Al-Qaeda in Sudan) and
Al-Shabab in Somalia. Since Osama

bin Laden's death on 2 May 2011, the influence of African leaders within
Al-Qaeda has increased significantly. All three presumed members of the
strategic command level originate from Africa. The revolutions of the Arab
Spring have not harmed Al-Qaeda. This contribution highlights the potential for
further expansion by Al-Qaeda on the African continent, and how this needs to
be responded to.##

##On the basis of comparative studies between the dynastic tradition of
the Ọyọ-Yoruba and ancient Near Eastern history, the present
article argues that Yoruba traditions of provenance, claiming immigration from the
Near East, are basically correct. According to Ọyọ-Yoruba
tradition, the ancestral Yoruba saw the Assyrian conquests of the Israelite
kingdom from the ninth and the eighth centuries B.C. from the perspective of
the Israelites. After the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C., they were deported to
eastern Syria and adopted the ruling Assyrian kings as their own. The collapse
of the Assyrian empire is, however, mainly seen through the eyes of the
Babylonian conquerors of Nineveh in 612 B.C. This second shift of perspective
reflects the disillusionment of the Israelite and Babylonian deportees from
Syria-Palestine towards the Assyrian oppressors. After the defeat of the
Egypto-Assyrian forces at Carchemish in Syria in 605 B.C. numerous deportees
followed the fleeing Egypto-Assyrian troops to the Nile valley, before
continuing their migration to sub-Saharan Africa.##

LINDEMANN, STEFAN

The Ethnic Politics of Coup
Avoidance: Evidence from Zambia and Uganda

##Though military interventions seem endemic in sub-Saharan Africa, more
than a third of all countries have been able to avoid military coups. To solve
this puzzle, this article relates the likelihood of military coups to the
degree of ethnic congruence between civilian and military leaders, arguing that
coup avoidance is most likely when government and army either exhibit the same
ethnic bias or are both ethnically balanced. This argument is illustrated by a
comparison of the diverging experiences of Zambia and Uganda. While Zambia is
among Africa's coup-free countries, Uganda's vulnerability to military
intervention has varied over time – with four coups under Obote and the Uganda
National Liberation Front (UNLF) but no coups under Amin and Museveni. Drawing
on original longitudinal data on the ethnic distibution of political and
military posts, the article shows that the absence of military coups in Zambia
goes back to the balanced composition of government and army. In Uganda, coup
avoidance under Amin and Museveni can be linked to the fact that government and
army exhibited the same ethnic bias, whereas the coups against the Obote and
UNLF regimes reflected either ethnic incongruence between civilian and military
leaders or the destabilising combination of a similarly polarised government
and army.##

Body and senses among the
Northwest Senegalese Wolof. A micro-ethnographical perspective

##Despite much interest being shown in the senses by anthropologists and
ethnographers in the last two decades, the conundrum of the universal or
culturally specific nature of sensory experiences, usages and meanings across
cultures has not been resolved. This is partly due to methodological problems
in effectively studying this phenomenon cross-culturally. This article suggests
microethnography as an adequate method capable of escaping from this limbo.
Drawing on thorough ethnographic fieldwork supported by videographic recordings
in north-western Senegal, it explores the sensory worlds of elders in
interaction on a Wolof village square. As will be shown, their embodied sensory
practices differ fundamentally from those in Western settings, even though no individual
sense is revealed to be dominant, as previous studies in the anthropology of
the senses have suggested. In particular, Wolof interactants realize
conversational functions with audio signals or touch that, in Western
societies, are proved to be accomplished by gaze. These differences in embodied
sensory practices are to be explained by conceptual, ecological and spatial
rationales.##

NICOLAS, ANDREA

From process to procedure.
Elders’ mediation and formality in Central Ethiopia

(Aethiopistische Forschungen
75)

Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz
Verlag 2011

396 pp., Euro 76,-; ISBN 3-447-06611-2

Keywords:
communication and law, elders and law, formality and law, law and mediation, mediation and law

##The basis for presenting the ethnographic material in this book is the
‚ethnography of communication’, a theory and method that were developed by the
sociolinguist Dell Hymes... The descriptions and conclusions presented in this
study are based synthesis of observations made during my stay in the field,
various field recordings and transcriptions of interviews or verbal exchanges
that I brought with me from Ethiopia, as well as in-depth analyses of video
sequences after my return to Germany. Re-occurring patterns and consistencies
between the single cases and oral descriptions were analysed, and examples
drawn upon for illustration. The individual interviews and instances of
participant observation used in this analysis are listed in the appendix... As
a result of this empirical study it can be deduced that just as habitual
actions can be
instrumentalised, instrumental behaviour may become habitualised and generalised
at a collective level. Such instrumental behaviour is thus applied in a'routine' manner
without loosing its effectiveness. While there are activities that are executed
primarily because they are requiredby ‚the law’ or ‚the ancestors’, there are
other actions that are well planned and means that are providently applied by
participants in formal procedures. There is no open discussion, at least not in
public, about some such consciously and deliberately used strategies. Laws, for
instance, are seldom meant to be questioned. Despite the fact that officials
may dissemble the contingent human processes that originally gave rise to a
particular law (lest the law lose its 'eternal' force), a 'rule' may well
constitute the outcome of a conscious act of decision-making. Rules and laws,
over the course of history, have often been debated and negotiated in very
specific decision-making settings by law-makers.##

##This article presents selected findings from an ongoing research
project on the transnational relations of Cameroonian Muslim migrants. It
highlights two aspects, namely the asymmetries and complexities of
communication between migrants and families left behind, as well as migrant
realities in Gabon and the United Arab Emirates. The project centers on
South–South and South-East migration, thus challenging and complementing the
focus on South-North migration prevailing in academic and policy-related
research. It traces changing patterns and perceptions of mobility, explores
migrants’ experiences in „foreign lands“ and their reflections about „home“,
and engages with migration regimes as well as migrants’ responses to regulatory
mechanisms.##

Ethnographic objects and the
evolution of the travelogues of Oscar Baumann

Focusing traveling the question of their usefulness and results arises –
the oeuvre, or corpus of works, or fruits resulting from travels is discussed
in the case of Baumann, a „classical Africa traveler“ of the 19th century. The
author presents the three facets of his endearvors – travels, collections, and
photographs.

The South Africa collection
of Rudolf Pöch and its processing by Walter Hirschberg

The author critically analyzes and revises the Pöch collection and its
scholarly processing by Hirschberg which is, accroding to Plankensteiner, the
first attempt so far. This includes the question of whether Hirschberg’s
analysis of the material agrees with Pöch’s intentions, as well as the question
of how material culture is framed, ideologically appropriated and accordingly
utilized in science depending on the zeitgeist.

##Translating cultural
authenticity: television consumption and the limits of moral community in Mali

The article takes the tremendous populariry of televised productions of
"Malian cultural traditions" as a window to explore the interlocking
of mass mediation processes and state-orchestrated cultural production in the
making of collective identities in postcolonial Mali. The article seeks to
understand how television, as a particular technology and institution of
mediation, plays into the process of "authentication" (understood as
subjective processes through which notions of the authentic are sensually
mediated and aesthetically re-cognized), and how it thereby complicates
official invocations of national community by furthering spectators' subjective
experiences of local particularity.##

STEINFORTH, ARNE S.

The Solid and the Liquid.
Identifying Institutions and Fields of Healing

##In Africa as in other parts of the world, research in medical
anthropology has, over some time now, recorded the emergence of new forms of healing
practice that are marked by a recombination of elements taken from Western
medicine, Christian faith healing, or other contexts. In applying the concept
of (social) institutions, this paper uses the example of a specific Malawian
healer in order to outline the analytic limitations posed by thinking of such
an arrangement exclusively in terms of medical pluralism comprised of separate
institutions of healing, and their subsequent syncretisation. Inspired by
Bourdieu's concept of the 'field', I suggest distinguishing between different
levels of analysis on which the different institutions of healing play, both
empirically and analytically, very different roles. In so doing, this paper
means to support on-going claims to put agency and dynamic processes of social
transformation into focus of medical anthropology.##

##The Maale of southern Ethiopia are a parilineal and patrilocal
society. Women move from one homestead to another one, while men usually stay
with their patrilineage from childhood until death. While it has been argued
that the movement of women leads to a lack of continuity which results in a
weakening of their identities, this article demonstrates the advantages women
gain by shifting residence. Instead of struggling to redefine their identities,
they acquire multiple identities, which they can make rational use of.##

##In Tanzania, the Marian Faith Healing Ministry
offers Catholic healing rituals under the patronage of the Virgin Mary.
Exorcism and a special water service are central to the healing process. People
bring physical, spiritual and social afflictions before the group's leader,
Felicien Nkwera. Combining the perspectives of the study of religions and
medical anthropology, the author analyses Nkwera's pastoral texts and the
personal healing narratives of the members. Thus, a complex image of the
healing process is created and framed within its Tanzanian interreligious
context and its global conservative Catholic context.##

ZIPS, WERNER& MARKUS WEILENMANN(Eds.)

The governance of legal
pluralism. Empirical studies from Africa and beyond

##The notion of governance subsumes analytic approaches that have
recently become highly popular in social sciences. It directs attention to a
holistic understanding of the participation of non-state actors in political
processes, the resulting policies, their facilitation and implementation, but
also their threats and social consequences. This volume assembles studies from
Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America to shed light on the complex
governance interactions determined by different constellations of legal
pluralism and, in turn, reshaping these dynamic arrangesments.##

The future of a critical
anthropology of Latin America. A survey of the literature

##People of Latin America are gaining ever more attention in the US due
to their rising visibility. Two recently published comprehensive works of
critical anthropologists on Latin America both reflect this occurring change
and provide important insights into contemporary social processes. By focusing
on four central issues - politics of identity and essentialism, groups in
between whiteness and difference, violence, the experiential space "Latin
America" - this review article shows that critical anthropology offers
substantial contributions to the study of Latin America and to the discipline
in general, while expressing the conviction that a politically committed
analysis heightens anthropology's relevance.##

The discovery of indigenous
modernity. Indian media worlds and knowledge cultures in the USA

Bender inquires into the role of Indian media, particularly broadcasting
and newspapers, in the present process of the emergence of their establishing a
good command in indigenous knowledge culture – consisting of an educational
system of their own and a renewed and manifold festival culture. Bender has
focused on the Ojibwa Reservation of Lac Courte Oreilles (population 5000) in
Northwestern Wisconsin. This case shows that the original inhabitants of North
America live in modernity since a long time, in their specific indigenous
version of modernity. After introducing the place of fieldwork the author
discusses conditions for the emergence of indigenous media, among others the Treaty
Rights controversy. Further chapters deal with the educational system, festival
culture, and more generally: religion, knowledge and identity in this
indigenous modernity which includes questions of Christianization and
literalization, millenarianism and religious diversification, and subjective
religious imaginary.

Changes and adaptations in
Amazonian (Peru, Ecuador) religious processes (from the XVIII. to the XXI.
centuries)

##Drawing on eighteenth-century Jesuit sources as well as on results of
an extensive fieldwork conducted since 1983, the author analyzes phenomena of
persistence and change in the shamanism of the Secoya Indians (Western Tucano)
in the Amazon region, on the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border. The changes include
the gradual contraction of the social power of shamans to the religious realm,
the reduction in the use of hallucinogenic plants, and the expansion of
shamanism beyond the traditional sphere of action.##

DORSCH, HAUKE

Black or Red Atlantic? - Mozambican
Students in Cuba and their Reinte-gration at Home

##This article presents the experiences of Mozambicanchildren who were sent in the 1970s and
80s to study in Cuba as well as their professional and ideological orientatiorn
after their return. Challenging collectivising perspectives on either an
Anthropology of the Afro-Atlantic or Socialist Internationalism, this
contribution focuses on an individual and his agency in the highly regulated
and disciplined context of Cuban schools. However, this context must be
described in order to appreciate the agency. Thus, the article shortly presents
Cuban-African relations after the Cuban Revolution, it describes how the
students were selected, sent abroad, were assigned their subjects, were sent
back home and finally integrated into the work force – or in the latter case –
how the state failed to do so. It shortly looks at the current situation of
African students in Cuba with respect to issues of race and identity and how
the Cuban discourse of Cuba, being an Afro-Latin nation, owing its development
to the work of Africans and paying it back through its missions of solidarity,
is expcriernced by African students.##

FEEST, CHRISTIAN& VIVIANE LUIZA DA SILVA

Between tradition and
modernity. The Bororo in photographs of the 1930s

##The single largest group of images in the collection of the Museum für
Völkerkunde Wien (Museum of Ethnology Vienna) are the photographs taken by the
Austro-Brazilian photographer Mario Baldi (1896-1957) between the 1920s and the
time of his death, when this group of documents was received from his estate.
Since the pictures (negatives, prints, and slides), numbering somewhere between
10,000 and 15,000, were mostly without documentation, it was decided to
catalogue them under a single number, in the vague expectation that one day the
problem of the missing documentation could be solved... Mario Baldi’s Bororo
photographs turn out to be a major contribution, both in terms of quantity and
quality, to the visual documentation of the Bororo in the 1930s. The present
paper was designed to put Baldi’s work in a comparative perspective in an
attempt to point out both its merits and shortcomings as well as to provide a
bsis for a brief discussion of the contributions of visual representations to
the ethnographic data base.##

##This collection of scholarly articles as well as creative writings by
leading Chicano/a writers and critics focuses on the primacy of the body as the
site and means of enunciation in U.S. Latino/a culture. Exploring the multiple
forms of how the body is written, performed, and represented, the essays
address a series of questions such as: In what ways is the body depicted as the
site where representations of difference and identity are inscribed? By
considering how cultural signifiers, practices, and discourses have been
creatively reconfigured, this volume asserts the significance of the body in
Latino/a cultural production.##

Traces of salvation
expectations in Guatemala Highland in colonial times

##During an insurrection in the community of Totonicapán in 1820
Atanasio Tzul was crowned to be King of the K'iche'. In this article it is
argued that his coronation was not a spontaneous event. In fact, it can be related
to a complex of ceremonial dances and oral histories. Through an analysis of
ethnohistorical sources from the 16th century it is shown how the heirs of the
pre-Hispanic elite developed the idea of an indigenous kingship. These ideas
influenced the development of ritual dance dramas re-enacting the Spanish
Conquest. Various sources confirm that beside these dances oral traditions
about pre-Hispanic history survived well into the 18th century and that there
was a belief in a return of the ancestors and the rebirth of the indigenous
kingship. This belief, which culminated at the end of the colonial period,
outlasted the events in Totonicapán and even today traces of it can be
observed.##